[Commentary] Yi Bolin, a German-Canadian, came to China in 2012 to study landscape painting.
In 2019, he came to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province to study for a PhD student in Chinese landscape painting under the guidance of Professor Zhang Jie from the China Academy of Art.
Recently, Yi Bolin’s first social-oriented solo exhibition "The Small World of Ink Mushrooms" was exhibited in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The series of works began in April 2020, with mushrooms as the theme, exploring the language of contemporary ink painting in the form of ink .
Yi Bolin told reporters that the reason why he chose mushrooms as the theme has several meanings because of his thoughts and feelings about people, life, and nature during the epidemic.
[Concurrent] (Yi Bolin, PhD student, China Academy of Art)
(Mushroom) On the one hand, it is very vigorous, because it will grow out within a few days, and the most interesting thing is that it usually grows at night, and there may be nothing in that area on the first day. Then the next day there was a group of mushrooms suddenly, but it was very small and fragile, and it broke when touched.
It is from this that we can find and see some thinking and feelings of life or people about life.
[Explanation] For the first solo exhibition facing the society, Yi Bolin believes that this is a great experience of interacting with the people and communicating with the outside world, and a lot of feedback and reflection can be obtained from it.
He said that the subject matter of mushrooms made him think that in the Internet era of information explosion, people have access to information more easily and communication costs are reduced, but at the same time, interpersonal relationships become more and more subtle.
He hopes that through this exhibition, people will realize that not to ignore some of the details of life, the people and things around are also very important.
[Concurrent] (Yi Bolin, PhD student, China Academy of Art)
We may think that this world is big, but each of us’s world is very small. This is not to be ignored. Then the starting point of life is very small, and the most critical things are all around us, which can be caused by this artistic expression. This consciousness, I hope not to care too much about the information on the phone or the WeChat Moments. This sentence may sound a bit silly, but the grass on the side of the road is more important, and they contain more vitality.
[Explanation] He said that mushrooms can be a worldwide theme, and some elements of Western myths have been borrowed in his own works. The integration of Eastern and Western cultures is also a vivid and interesting story behind this theme.
[Concurrent] (Yi Bolin, PhD student, China Academy of Art)
It can be said that the only theme from Western myths is the "fairy ring", because sometimes, especially in forests and grasslands, there are mushrooms that grow into a circle, and then there is this story in the West. In fact, these mushrooms are at night. When the moon comes out, the fairies will sit on the mushrooms and dance or have a meeting.
At the end of the painting, I feel that I have really become a mushroom in my heart.
[Explanation] Finally, Yi Bolin introduced that many of the works this time use traditional Chinese landscape painting composition. Although the paintings are all mushrooms, they give the impression of mountains. From a distance, the mushroom group resembles distant mountains and the woods appear and disappear. In the mist.
He hopes that he will gain spiritual nutrition in both China and the West. The paintings contain the outstanding characteristics of the two cultures. He firmly believes that it is a wonderful thing to communicate in the form of exhibitions and become a link for cross-cultural and cross-art communication.
[Concurrent] (Yi Bolin, PhD student, China Academy of Art)
This exhibition made me feel the power of cross-cultural and artistic exchanges, so in the future, if I particularly hope to be able to communicate on both sides, both China and the West, through the form of exhibitions, I think this will become a very beautiful thing. .
Shen Yishan and Zhou Sun Yu report from Hangzhou
Editor in charge: [Ji Xiang]